


catch me if you can (working on my tan)

by butterflysky



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Cruise Ships, Established Relationship, F/M, Hydra (Marvel), Recovered Memories, Red Room (Marvel), SHIELD, Set pre-Iron Man, Sort Of, extreme liberties taken with canon, mentions of past trauma, set in the mcu but ive borrowed stuff from comics too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-17
Updated: 2019-02-24
Packaged: 2019-05-24 17:40:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14959103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/butterflysky/pseuds/butterflysky
Summary: SHIELD are taking a chance on her, Natasha knows — or, rather, she’s been repeatedly told. A stern looking woman with dark hair pulled back in a bun had looked at her, arms folded, and told her that this was her chance to prove her trustworthiness (and Natasha heard usefulness hidden in there, too). It’s an unusual assignment for her, that’s for sure. She’s used to being the one sent to kill, not the one sent to protect.(SHIELD send Natasha on her first mission. Things get complicated when Natasha realises the Winter Soldier is involved.)





	1. Chapter 1

SHIELD are taking a chance on her, Natasha knows — or, rather, she’s been repeatedly told. A stern looking woman with dark hair pulled back in a bun had looked at her, arms folded, and told her that this was her chance to prove her trustworthiness (and Natasha heard _usefulness_ hidden in there, too). It’s an unusual assignment for her, that’s for sure. She’s used to being the one sent to kill, not the one sent to protect. It feels strange, but she thinks it’s a good strange. 

“Don’t let us down,” Fury had said, as he handed her the intel she needed. He’d held her gaze for a moment, and it’d felt like an unspoken _please._ He wants to trust her. She likes him for that.

She looks through the intel on her way to the location — a luxury cruise populated primarily by overworked business types, where her target, Tony Stark, the CEO of some company she vaguely knows of, is going to relax. The problem is, this CEO is someone the bad guys are _very_ keen to get their hands on. Another problem is, SHIELD don’t know _who_ the bad guys are. All they know is they’re sending someone to grab him, and Natasha has to stop them at all costs (SHIELD had been _very_ clear on that).

Her plane lands, and she glides through security with no problems — another thing she’s going to have to get used to. A taxi takes her to the port, and she checks in on the cruise under her fake name. Her cover story is simple enough; she’s a PA checking out the cruise for her boss, onboard for a week, which just so happens to be the duration of Stark’s stay. Natasha isn’t sure what’s going to happen to him once he leaves — apparently other agents are taking over from her after that, but that’s fine by her. Keeping some rich guy safe for a week sounds easy enough, and then he won’t be her problem anymore. She couldn’t have asked for a better first mission. 

Her room is on the small side, but the bed is comfortable and the window opens, so she’s happy enough. She gets changed from her travelling clothes into something more casual, high waisted shorts (with guns tucked away underneath) and a vest top, and sets off to find Stark. She doesn’t need to make contact, just needs to watch him, keep an eye on anyone watching him as closely as her, and then take them out quietly in an empty corridor later. It’s textbook.

She finds him out on the deck, sat too close to the railing for her to properly relax, alternating between drinking and typing on his phone. He’s not alone onboard — Natasha knows someone named Pepper Potts has accompanied him — but he’s alone for now. Nobody else is sitting close by, and nobody appears to be paying him any attention. Natasha watches him until he heads back to his room, even follows to make sure he gets back safe, then sticks a tiny device to his doorframe that’ll alert her if anyone attempts to force the door.

She goes back to her room and taps into the cruise’s security cameras for a while, watching on her SHIELD issue phone. Nothing seems out of the ordinary, which she finds…confusing. Whoever is after Stark must be onboard, because the cruise doesn’t dock again until the end of the week, when Stark’s trip is finished. And unless they’re _very_ good, Natasha would have noticed them. So either SHIELD’s intel is wrong, this is some new, strangely convoluted test that she hasn’t figured out how to solve yet, or the person is _very good._

It keeps her awake for another few hours, and by the time she finally falls asleep, she’s not sure which she prefers.

 

 

The next day starts out simple enough. Nothing happened overnight, and she sees Stark is alive and well and eating breakfast with a woman she assumes is Pepper Potts. She checks in with Fury, tells him that she can’t see anything wrong, then goes back to watching Stark. He’s not really doing anything, which Natasha supposes is the point of a luxury retreat, but it makes for a boring few hours on the deck under the relentless sun.

She’s thinking of calling off the whole thing, contacting Fury again and getting angry that he clearly doesn’t want to trust her after all if he’s sent her on a mission with absolutely no risk, when she sees something that makes her pause.

At first she’s convinced it’s just her paranoia — there’s a man sat behind her, just to her left, and she wouldn’t have noticed him at all if she hadn’t turned in her seat to get her phone from her bag. He’s reading the newspaper and drinking something from a mug, nonchalant, casual, and she’s tempted to turn back around when he glances up and meets her eyes and she freezes.

He smiles, just a slight curl of his lips, then flips his paper closed and stands. She looks back at Stark — a quick turn of her head that’s more instinctual than calculated — and by the time she faces forward again, the man is gone.

Her breath is coming fast. Now she has her answer — the person is _very good._

She picks up her phone, hovers her finger over Fury’s name, then stops. She can handle this alone, she knows that, and telling SHIELD at this point seems counterintuitive when she knows it’d result in a task force descending on the cruise ship in minutes and her mission taken out of her hands. Fury doesn’t need to know that the person after Stark is the Winter Soldier. At least, not yet.

Natasha scans the deck for any sign of him, but he’s vanished. Of course he has. She expects no different — she knows him, after all. And she knows that he _let_ her notice him, that he sat perfectly positioned to catch her eye the next time she turned, and that means he wants something from her. Or, he just wants her to know it’s _him_ she’ll have to stop. Again, she finds herself not sure which option she prefers.

Stark is still utterly oblivious, eating his lunch and chatting to Potts like his life isn’t in imminent danger. Natasha stands, stuck between leaving him unprotected to find the Soldier or staying and potentially letting the Soldier slip away again. She feels _off,_ unbalanced by the weight of SHIELD and Fury’s expectations and the Soldier’s presence; these kinds of decisions shouldn’t be so hard, she’s made them before more times than she can count. 

She sits back down. It feels too much like a trap, and if the Soldier really wants her attention that bad, he can come to her. Her hands are steady on her phone as she puts it back into her bag. 

 

 

There’s a black tie event later that night, and Stark, of course, is attending. Natasha slips into her best dress and styles her hair as quickly as she can manage, practices her smile in the mirror, then heads for the ballroom. She sees no sign of the Soldier.

The event turns out to be a meal and a dance. She’s seated at a table of businessmen who leer at her rather than talk to her, and she ignores them all in favour of watching Stark. SHIELD had been clear that whoever’s after him wants him alive, but that doesn’t mean he’s safe — _especially_ not with the Soldier after him.

When their plates are cleared away, a jazz band strikes up a tune, and Natasha stands smoothly and makes her way to the floor. She hates this kind of thing, but she has to be wherever Stark is, so she does her best to dance alone. At least, she does until she feels a hand warm on the small of her back, and a low voice in her ear says, “Mind if I have this dance?”

She goes tense, then forces herself to relax, to turn and meet the Soldier head on. “Sure.”

He smiles at her, takes her hand in his (flesh, she notices, which means the arm around her waist is metal) and she puts her hand on his shoulder and moves with him in a slow rhythm that only just keeps time with the band.

“I’m assuming you’re here to watch him?” he says, and nods his head in Stark’s direction.

“I am,” she says, wary. “And I’m assuming you’re here to take him.”

“Hmm,” he says. “What gave you that idea?”

“You’re not going to get info out of me that easily,” Natasha says, and his smile grows.

“I know,” he says. “But it was worth a shot.”

She hasn’t seen him in so long that he feels almost like a stranger, if not for the way that she remembers the feel of his hands on her. There hadn’t been time, when she’d left, to go to him, to explain, to say goodbye. She wonders what he thinks of that.

“You knew I’d be here,” she guesses.

He laughs. “ _Natalie Rushman?_ I knew it was you as soon as I saw you on the guest list.”

“And what name are you here under?” she asks. “I know it’s not _Soldier._ ”

Any trace of good humour on his face vanishes, replaced by something cautious. She can almost see him trying to decide whether to tell her or not.

“James,” he says, finally. “It’s not the name they gave me for this mission, but it’s the one I’m using.”

“I see,” she says. She gets the feeling that’s supposed to mean something to her, but she’s not sure what. “Why are you here?”

“I thought you’d assumed that already,” he says, and the way he looks at her is…warm. Affectionate, even. It confuses her.

“I mean with me,” she says, before she can think better of it. “Why here _now,_ and why earlier. You want something from me.”

“I don’t want anything from you,” he says, and she finds she can’t read his expression anymore. It confuses her even more. She’d always been good at reading him.

“Then what’s this about?” she asks, and he looks past her, in Stark’s direction, and she tenses again. If this was all a distraction, if he’d done something to Stark and she hadn’t noticed while she _danced_ with him, she’d never forgive herself.

And then, he pulls her in closer, tilts his head to speak into her ear, breath hot where it brushes her neck, and says, “I wasn’t sent here for Stark.”

“Then who—?” she starts, then it hits her. She closes her eyes, collects herself, breathes deeply for a moment and catches the scent of his shampoo — minty, as cold and sharp as his namesake. “You were sent here to kill me.”

“They don’t like it when their own get away,” James says. She should feel scared, she knows, but the hand in hers and the one against her back are both gentle, soft. Nothing about him is threatening, but she knows better than to think that means anything.

She steps away from him, and he lets his arms drop by his sides. They look at each other. She notices things she shouldn’t, like that his hair is shorter than the last time she saw him, that his mouth is curved downwards in a frown, that she still finds him impossibly handsome.

“Are you going to do it?” she asks, and is glad to hear her voice doesn’t waver. It’s a stupid question, she thinks — the Winter Soldier doesn’t fail.

She sees his shoulders move as he sighs. He’s in a tux, his bow tie just slightly too lose. There’s the beginnings of a five o’clock shadow on his jaw. She wishes she’d had time to say goodbye.

“No,” he says.

Natasha starts. “What?”

His smile is soft. “I said, no. I’m not going to do it.”

“But—” She’s aware that her mouth is hanging open, that she probably looks ridiculous.

He shrugs. “I’d never hurt you.”

There’s something in her throat. She can’t let herself _feel,_ can’t compromise herself like that. She’d learnt that in the Red Room, threw the knowledge away when it came to him, remembered it in time to leave without a word.

“I see,” she manages, eventually.

Slowly, he retakes her hand. She steps closer, and he puts his other hand on her back again. They slide back into rhythm.

“Then why _are_ you here?” she asks, when she thinks a minute or so has ticked by. She’s distracted by how solid he feels beneath her hands, how warm he feels through the fabric of his tux.

“They sent me here, so I came,” he says. “Doesn’t mean I have to do what I was sent here to do.”

She allows herself a few moments to imagine him deciding to break free, to come with her back to SHIELD, for them both to have another chance. It’ll never happen, but the thought makes something in her chest ache.

“Then you’re here to do something else,” she says, and he laughs, slightly.

“Maybe, Natalia, I just wanted to see you.” 

“Nothing’s ever that simple,” she says, to cover her surprise, and he looks saddened.

“Of course not,” he says, quietly.

And then, she realises. She could kick herself for overlooking it for so long. “If you’re not here for Stark, then someone else is. I need to watch him.”

“Okay,” he says.

Neither of them move to let go.

“Maybe,” he starts, hesitant, still quiet. “Maybe I can help you find them.”

She looks up at him, surprised. “You want to _help?_ ”

“Yeah,” he says. “I have to do _something_ while I’m here.”

Her hold on him tightens. She doesn’t want to let him go again, in any sense.

“Okay,” she says. “I’ll let you help.”

 

 

It might be a trick, she thinks, when the dance ends and they both tail Stark back to his room. James might be waiting to get the drop on her, or distracting her while someone else drags Stark away. She’s acting so unprofessionally she knows that if Fury ever hears about any of this, she’ll _never_ make it to being a SHIELD agent.

But she still doesn’t stop walking with James.

“He’s safe,” James says, when Stark’s door closes behind him. “You’ve put something on his door, haven’t you?”

“I have,” Natasha says. She’s tempted to knock on Stark’s door and check he’s _really_ safe in there, but James’ expression is so open, so _trustworthy,_ that she thinks she’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. For now.

“Then, what now?” James asks.

What she _wants_ to do is drag him somewhere and talk to him, get whatever it is he isn’t telling her out of him, but she knows the mission comes first. “Now, we find whoever it is who's really here for Stark.”

“Any ideas?” he asks her, and she shrugs.

“I haven’t seen anything suspicious,” she admits. “Apart from you.”

He smiles. “Then we better start looking.”

James takes the front half of the cruise ship while she takes the back; she spends most of the time watching him on her phone, dreading the moment he turns back in the direction of Stark’s room, or her screen goes dark as something cuts the cameras. When neither happens, she feels herself start to relax against her better judgement. She’d always trusted him completely, out in the field and in the training room and wherever else they'd ended up, but they’ve always been on the same side. Now, there’s a gulf between them, and it’s unbalancing her.

Eventually, she does her own search, and finds nothing worth reporting. As she heads back up to the deck, her phone vibrates — it’s a text from Clint, asking her how the mission is going. She has no idea where to even begin, so she locks her phone and shoves it back in her bag. She’ll figure something out to reply with later, because she hates leaving him in the dark when she owes him so much.

James is already on the deck when she arrives, one elbow leant against the bar, a drink in his gloved hand. His bow tie is undone, his hair is ruffled like he’s run his fingers through it a few times, and he’s popped the first button of his shirt. He looks devastatingly handsome. She _misses_ him. 

“Find anything?” he asks, when she reaches him.

“Nothing,” she says. She’d watched him on the cameras until she was satisfied he was really searching — and he _had_ really been searching. She can trust him, she realises, like she always has. She remembers what it was like out in the field, on missions, when they were perfectly attuned to each other, trust coming so instinctively it felt like something intrinsic between them and not something earned.

“Strange,” he says. “Are they planning on grabbing him when we dock?”

“Maybe,” Natasha says, shrugging, and signals the bartender. Her mind isn’t on the mission anymore. It _should_ be, but she wants — _needs —_ to know whatever it is he’s keeping to himself. She sits on the barstool next to him and takes a long drink of her vodka and coke.

“I think—” he starts, and Natasha puts her glass down on the bar hard enough that the sound makes him stop.

“What are you not telling me, James?” she says, and for a moment he only looks at her.

“I remember who I am, now,” he says, and Natasha looks up at him, surprised. It’d been known that the Soldier had no identity outside of _the Soldier,_ that he was the perfect weapon and that was all. Of course, she knew him as more, as a _person,_ but he hadn’t known his name, or where he’d come from, so neither had she. It hadn’t seemed to matter that much, then, but she’d been thinking about it since — if there was any hope, any chance for him if he could find out who he’d been _before._

“What?” is all she can manage.

He shrugs. “They tried some new memory wipe technique on me, and it didn’t work. They didn’t catch on for a while, and it was long enough for me to start to remember things. They must suspect something now, though, because they’ve sent me after you. A test, I’m guessing.”

“Then we’re both being tested,” Natasha says, and lifts her glass in a toast. “To failing.”

“Why have you failed?” he asks, as he clinks his glass against hers.

“If Fury hears I took my eyes off Stark to slow dance with you, I think I’ll be fired,” Natasha says, and James laughs.

“We can make him see reason,” he says, and Natasha’s fingers tighten on her glass. She’s dangerously close to hoping. _We._

“So, who are you?” Natasha asks. “Tell me about yourself.”

“James Buchanan Barnes,” he says, easily, without hesitation. “Some people called me Bucky.”

“Bucky,” she says, thoughtfully. “Hmm. I think I’ll stick with James.”

His smile makes his eyes light up. “Fine by me.”

Natasha knows exactly who Bucky Barnes is — was — but if he’s not going to talk about it, she’s not going to ask just yet. She’s sure there are stories to tell, questions to answer, but it can come later. If they have a later.

“Well,” she says. “Nice to finally meet you, James.”

His smile softens. “I really am glad to see you again, Natalia.”

Her grip on her glass tightens. Her throat feels dry. “I’m glad to see you, too. And glad you’re not going to kill me.”

His laugh sounds like it’s startled out of him. “Well, that’s always a good thing.”

They look at each other for a moment, in the soft light of the bar and the twinkle of the fairy lights strung along the deck. She can hear the waves far below them.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she says finally, quietly. He nods, steps aside to let her pass, and she feels his eyes on her until she’s out of view.

 

 

Stark spends most of the next day sunbathing, which means her and James spend most of the day perched on sunbeds, watching him from behind mirrored sunglasses. Natasha sees herself reflected in James’ aviators, and all the tiny mirror images of each other reflected back in an infinite line within them, and feels lightheaded. They have so many different versions of themselves, so many different fragments, and she has no idea how to begin piecing _herself_ together, let alone where James is in the process. Does he call himself Bucky in his head? Does he remember the war, remember the time he was Captain America’s best friend, then his fallen comrade? Does he remember who he was _before_ the war? 

He still calls her Natalia, and she can’t decide how it makes her feel.

“I’m not used to protecting someone,” he says, eventually, and Natasha jumps because she’d thought the same, and it’s a reminder of how close they used to be, before she found a way out. She’s _changed_ with SHIELD, at least she thinks she has, but how can she if her and the Winter Soldier still think the same way? Except—he’s not the Winter Soldier anymore. Is he? She realises he hasn’t actually said he plans on leaving the name behind and goes cold under the hot sun.

“Me neither,” is all she says.

 

 

They get a table at a diagonal to Stark’s at dinner, and Natasha keeps tabs on everyone in his immediate vicinity while James keeps watch on the doors.

“What was it like after I left?” Natasha asks, when the only sound between them for some time has been the clink of their forks against their plates.

James puts his fork down, clears his throat, looks like he’s choosing his words carefully. “Cold,” he says. “Dark.”

She feels a sharp pain somewhere inside her. “Did they…”

“They thought I might know where you went,” he says, deliberately offhand. “Then they tried to make me forget you, and that’s when their wipes stopped working.”

While she’s been working out who she can be at SHIELD, he’s been remembering who he _really_ is. Natasha takes a moment to drink her water, so she can think, then says, “What will you do now?”

He looks at his plate when he says, “I don’t know.”

 

 

They hit a breakthrough later that night. While Stark and Potts share a moment alone at the back of the deck, someone dressed entirely in black starts approaching them slowly. Natasha spots them before James; she nudges his shoulder, and he turns his head just enough to see the figure creeping forwards. 

James points at Stark, and Natasha knows what he’s planning. She heads forwards, then deliberately affects her gait, staggers like she’s drunk, stumbles straight between Stark and Potts, giggles, says, “ _Sorry,_ I’m hopeless when I’ve had a drink—”

Stark steadies her with a hand on her elbow, and she babbles something about looking for the ladies’ room while Stark and Potts give each other concerned looks over her head. When she glances around them, she sees James and the figure have both disappeared.

Once she’s got away from Stark and Potts — she overdid the drunk act, because they insisted on walking her all the way back to her room — she goes straight for the cameras. James is, of course, _very good,_ so most of the journey is missing from the video. But she sees the end, like she was supposed to, she assumes, and knows James has the person in the now empty ballroom.

By the time she gets there, the man is already zip tied to a chair.

“He say anything?” Natasha asks, striding towards them. James stands behind the chair, arms folded.

“I’m not telling you shit,” the man says, and spits on the ground.

“That’s fine,” Natasha says, and meets James’ eyes. “We can be persuasive.”

 

 

They eventually get out of him that he was hired by a rival company to kidnap Stark, get the plans for his new invention from him, then kill him. He claims to be alone, but Natasha doesn’t believe him. He won’t give up his coworkers, though, so they leave him cuffed and unconscious in James’ room.

“I need to call this in,” Natasha says, reluctantly. As soon as she dials for SHIELD, James will disappear. She knows that.

“What about the others?” James asks, and the tension in her shoulders eases.

“Sure,” Natasha says. “Lets get them.”

 

 

They search every inch of the cruise, and Natasha finally finds the rest of them hidden in an unused kitchen, crowded round surveillance equipment that’s clearly failed them, because it didn’t show her coming (that, or James has done something to the cameras while they’ve been separated, which she thinks is probably more likely).

There’s three of them, and she can see them assuming they’ll be able to take her before she vaults the counter between them and knocks one down before the other two have time to blink.

When James arrives, she has them cuffed and out cold.

“I didn’t notice them,” Natasha says, frowning down at them. “This whole time. They can’t be _that_ good.”

James looks down at them on the floor. “Me neither.”

Natasha sighs, pushes her hair back from her face, then says, “SHIELD need to hear about this.”

She takes her phone, looks down at Fury’s name in her contacts, then sighs again. She’s not sure how she can explain this and leave James out of it, especially considering one of the men saw him, spoke to him. But if SHIELD hear the Winter Soldier himself helped her on her first mission, well. It wouldn’t be good.

 “Something wrong?” he asks, hands in his pocket, leaning against the wall. She looks at him, at the way his hair is sticking up like he hasn’t combed it all day, at the exposed skin of his neck uncovered by his shirt, at the way his mouth is curling down. He looks _vulnerable._ She can’t bear the thought of SHIELD hauling him away for questioning. But if he went willingly…

“I’ll call them in the morning,” she says, and locks her phone.

“Okay,” he says, and straightens up from the wall. She thinks he looks relieved.

They leave the men with the other one, locked up in James’ room, and then go back to stash the equipment, too.

“SHIELD will want to take a look at this,” Natasha says, crouching to inspect their surveillance tech. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Do you like working with SHIELD?” James asks, and Natasha stops moving, focuses her gaze on the black screen in front of her. She knows there’s more to his question than idle curiosity.

“I do,” Natasha says. She turns around, looks him in the eye. “They’ve given me a second chance.”

She sees him breathe in deep and resettle himself against the wall. “Just like that?”

“I had to earn it,” Natasha says, and stands up. “I’m earning it now.”

“I see.”

“Sometimes I’m not sure I deserve it,” Natasha says.

“I can understand that.” He isn’t quite looking at her.

“But I think I do,” she says, and his gaze moves back to hers. “I think we both do.”

He looks surprised. She hears him breathe in sharply.

“I’m calling SHIELD tomorrow,” Natasha says, and steps past him to open the door. “What will you do?”

He looks at her, then at the ground. “I don’t know.”

 

 

Natasha walks back in the direction of her room, and James goes with her. Neither of them speak. When they reach her door, Natasha hesitates. 

“Where are you going to sleep?” she asks.

“I’ll crash on a sunbed,” he says, and shrugs. “Pretend I’ve passed out drunk if anyone finds me.”

“You don’t have to,” she says. When he looks at her, she opens her door, holds it so he can step inside.

She sees him swallow, then he walks past her into the room. After a moment, she follows, pulls the door shut behind her.

The room feels smaller with him in it. The bed’s a single.

“I’ll take the floor,” he says, quiet, and then she reaches for his hand.

“You don’t have to.”

They hold each other’s gaze, and suddenly it’s like no time has passed at all, like it hasn’t been months and months since they last saw each other, like she didn’t vanish without a word. It’s just him, and her, and nothing else matters.

“Natalia,” he says, and she leans up to kiss him.

He feels the same, sounds the same, pulls her closer like he used to. The scruff on his cheeks scrapes her skin, but it doesn’t hurt, not when his mouth is so soft on hers. She presses herself to him as close as she can, gasps when he pulls her onto the bed with him, slides on top of him and starts unbuttoning his shirt.

“I missed you,” she says, then ducks to kiss her way down his neck, his chest.

He’s breathing fast. “And I missed you.” She looks back up at him, and he says, “ _So_ much.”

She sits up, traces her fingers down his chest, looks at him looking back at her. The only light in the room comes from the moon slanting through the window above the bed, and it catches his eyes, makes them bright in the dark.

He pulls her down to him again, and she goes willingly.

 

 

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, after, when they’ve squeezed themselves onto the bed as best as they can — Natasha is more or less using him as both pillow and mattress, her head on his chest, his heart beating beneath her ear. She hears the sheets shifting as he turns his head to look down at her. 

“For what?”

“I left without you,” she says. “I left without _speaking_ to you. I didn’t even say goodbye.”

He’s silent. She braces herself.

“Natalia,” he says, finally. “Please don’t tell me you’ve been beating yourself up over this for all this time.”

She’s faintly surprised. “But—”

He holds her tighter, his metal fingers cool on her bare back. “I _couldn’t_ leave. You know that. They had me on too short a leash. You did the right thing. I was glad you got out. _Am_ glad you got out.”

She’s been with SHIELD for months, now, but they’ve only just started to trust her. At first, when they’d kept her locked up — in something more like a hotel room than a cell, but confinement was confinement — she’d had plenty of time to run back over everything that’d happened, everything that’d taken her to that exact moment. She’d had plenty of time for regret, for guilt.

“You could get out now,” Natasha says, quiet. “I could help you.”

“They won’t let me go without a fight,” James says, into her hair.

“Then we’ll give them one,” Natasha says, and she can feel James smiling against the top of her head.

“I like the way you think,” he says. There’s a pause, and then, “I _want_ to go. I was going to disappear after the cruise, and earlier if…well, if you didn’t want to see me.”

“You don’t have to disappear at all,” Natasha says. “Come back with me. To SHIELD. They helped me, they can help you too.”

He’s quiet for so long that Natasha starts the painful process of untangling fantasy from reality. He’s not going back with her, they won’t have any kind of life together, she was stupid to even entertain the thought.

But then he says, “Okay,” and Natasha hears her breath catch in her throat.

 

 

Natasha calls SHIELD the next day, while James lounges on a sunbed next to her.

“Fury?” she says, when he answers. “It’s Nat. Stark’s safe, but there’s something weird going on, you’ll need to investigate.” She glances across at James, who’s looking back at her, faint smile on his face. “Oh, and I’m bringing someone home with me. I think you’ll like him.”


	2. Chapter 2

They let her watch some of James’ questioning. Not much of it, mind, and she’s hidden behind a two way mirror. But she’s there. She hopes he knows. 

 “So,” Fury says, at the beginning of his third interview. Interrogation, Natasha thinks, is too harsh a word. 

 James moves his head just enough to show he’s listening. His hands are cuffed, and Natasha doesn’t know if they’re even strong enough to hold him, but he hasn’t so much as experimentally flexed the entire time she’s been watching. His legs are secured to his chair. There’s one more strap around his metal arm, locking it to the chair — Natasha had assured him SHIELD were good, that they’d help, and she hopes he remembers that. They have to be careful, even if it seems they don’t have even an iota of trust in him. She’d been resentful, at first, but she understood it now. 

 “Mind telling me how Captain America’s best friend is alive and well in the 21st century?” Fury asks, and James smiles, the barest twitch of his lips. 

 “It’s a long story,” he says. 

 “You’ve got nowhere else to be.” Fury’s gaze is hard to hold for long, Natasha knows. James makes a good effort, then looks down at the table. 

 “Hydra blew me out a train,” James says, and Fury leans back, like he’s settling in. “Then they were waiting for me when I hit the ground.”

 “Hydra,” Fury says. “But I understand you know our own Agent Romanov.”

 Natasha starts, because she isn’t an _agent,_ not yet. Unless this is Fury’s way of telling her she made it… _or_ it’s a test, for her or James or both of them. Maria Hill is watching her very closely. She keeps her face blank. 

 James seems to be doing the same. His expression betrays nothing as he says, “Hydra had many uses for me. Sometimes they sent me to other organisations.”

 Fury folds his arms. “You told Agent Hill you were subjected to electrocution.”

 James nods. “Many times.”

 “Tell me about its effects,” Fury says, and Natasha sees James tense. 

 “I told Agent Hill,” James says, and Fury shrugs. 

 “Tell me.”

 James moves a bit, enough to make the cuffs clink together. Fury doesn’t so much as blink. 

 “It hurt,” James says. “That’s the main thing I remember. They made me forget everything before I was the Winter Soldier, and that made me more…susceptible, to their programming. And then they tried a new technique on me, without the electroshocks, and it didn’t work. So now I’m here.”

 Natasha realises she’s leaning forward, hands tight on her knees. She forces herself to relax. 

 "And Agent Romanov?” Fury asks, and now Natasha understands why she’s been allowed to watch this round of questioning. It _is_ a test. For both of them. “How does she come into this?”

 James glances at the mirror, and when he speaks, that’s where he directs his words. “I was only human when I was with her.”

Natasha doesn’t let herself react. Maria Hill’s eyes on her are sharp. 

 “Alright Barnes,” Fury says, and James looks back at him. “That’s enough for one day.”

 

 

“I don’t understand why I was relevant to that line of questioning,” Natasha says, immediately, when Fury opens the door. 

 He gives her an exasperated look. “You know how this looks, right? You go on your first mission, meet up with the Winter Soldier, and bring him to SHIELD headquarters with you?”

 “I completed my mission,” Natasha says, and she hears the anger lying beneath her words. She thought he wanted to trust her. 

 Fury looks at her for a long moment, then says, “Natasha. We have to be careful.”

 Natasha can’t meet his eyes, so she looks back through the mirror, at James, calm and compliant as SHIELD agents pull him up from his seat and lead him from the room. “Where are you keeping him?”

 “Somewhere like where you stayed when you arrived,” Fury says. 

 “I’m not allowed to be in the same room as him, am I?”

 “Not yet,” Fury says. He at least looks sympathetic. 

 "I understand,” Natasha says, and leaves the room. 

 

 

Clint finds her beating up a punching bag in the gym. 

 “I didn’t take you for a brawler,” Clint says, and she stops, steadies the bag. 

 “I’m not,” she says. “I’m…expelling some unwanted emotion.”

 “Oh, it’s _that,_ is it?” Clint says, and walks to stand with her. “I just got dragged into a meeting with Hill and Fury. They told me to watch you.”

 “Did they?” Natasha kicks the bag, hard. 

 “Personally, I’m just annoyed you’ve upstaged me,” Clint says. “I manage to bring in the Black Widow after _years_ in the field, and you nab the Winter Soldier three days into your first mission?”

 She feels a smile start to form on her face. “I’m good at my job.”

 “Of course,” Clint says. “Fury and Hill are just…worried that you’ve been compromised.”

 “Have they checked the Soldier for triggers?” Natasha asks, to dodge the question. “They won’t want him flipping on them if they say the wrong word in interrogation.”

 “They’ve done what they can,” Clint says. “He’s given up all the words he knows already.”

 Natasha pauses. “He has?”

 "Yep, wrote them a long list,” Clint shrugs. “From what he remembers.”

 “They’re going to interview him for years, aren’t they?” Natasha says, and lets her head drop against the punching bag. “I thought I was giving him his freedom, but I’ve just dragged him from one form of captivity to another.”

 “Hey,” Clint says. “Stop being dramatic. He wouldn’t have come with you if he didn’t want to, and you _know_ this is better than where he was before. And if he’d tried to disappear, _someone_ would have found him.”

 Natasha exhales deeply and shuts her eyes. “I know.”

 Clint puts a hand on her shoulder and squeezes. “It’s gonna be okay, Nat. Trust me, and trust them.”

 "It’d be easier if they trusted me,” Natasha says, but she lets the punching bag go. 

 

 

 The next day, they don’t let her watch James’ interview, but they do let her talk to him for exactly five minutes in the interview room, with them watching on the other side of the mirror. 

 “How are you?” is the first thing out her mouth, and she knows it’s a stupid question before she’s even finished speaking. 

 “Tired,” he says, and his smile seems the best he can manage. He _does_ look tired; there are dark circles etched under his eyes, and the corners of his mouth slope downwards. 

 “You can’t sleep?” Natasha asks, more worried, now. “Where are they keeping you?”

 “Nightmares,” James says. “Memories. I’m in a very nice room, though.”

 “Have they got you a therapist?”

 “No,” James says.

 “They should,” Natasha says. 

 “They don’t trust me not to kill them yet,” James says, with a shrug. 

 “Yet,” Natasha says. 

He shrugs again. “I have to hope, right?” He smiles just genuinely enough that she feels herself smiling back. “I’m an American icon, I’ve been told.”

 Of course — he’s Bucky Barnes. He’s in history textbooks, documentaries, films. He’s not what they made him into. 

 “So you are,” she says. 

 His handcuffs clink as he leans towards her. “I still miss you.”

 There’s a lump in her throat. “I miss you too.”

 "Alright,” Fury’s voice says, over the speaker. “Time for you to go, Agent Romanov.”

 

 

“You think I’m compromised,” Natasha says, as soon as the door shuts on the interview room. “Don’t you?”

 “I’d be stupid not to consider it,” Fury says. 

 Natasha sighs. “I know. But I’m not. You can see he’s not the Soldier anymore.”

 Fury looks very seriously at her. “We’re assessing the situation. In the meantime, Agent, you can start investigating the group after Stark.”

 “I’m an Agent?” she asks impulsively. 

 “You are,” Fury says. “Welcome to SHIELD.”

 

 

Natasha finds pretty fast that she doesn’t have clearance to view where James is being kept — in fact, she can’t find any record of his existence in the building at all. She starts going through the reports on her mission on the cruise ship, but before long her eyes start burning and she shuts her laptop. She still lives in the main SHIELD compound, in a private apartment — she’ll get round to finding her own place eventually, but for now, this will do. 

 It’ll especially do now, when she’s sick of work but too restless to sleep, with nothing to do but what she does best — seep into the shadows and rummage through what’s being hidden from her.

 She starts in the section of the building she was kept in when she first arrived at SHIELD. Her clearance doesn’t let her in, of course, but there’s always more than one way to get through a door. There’s no trace of James, but then she’d guessed that they wouldn’t keep him anywhere she could easily find him. 

 Natasha keeps going, deeper into SHIELD’s secrets, crawling through vents and, once, slipping outside to scale the wall to a window. She finds nothing, until she gets to the top floor. 

They’re keeping James in a heavily secured room, unmanned, she guesses, due to the risk of fatality if something triggers the Soldier. The door will give her problems, she can tell immediately, but the air vent won’t. Natasha’s not stupid — she knows she can access the room because someone, somewhere, has allowed her to, that she’s probably being watched at that very moment, but she doesn’t care. They’re watching her because they don’t trust her, but she’ll prove them wrong and let them see it. 

 When she drops to the floor in James’ room, he’s pressed against the wall like he’s ready to leap at her. He relaxes when he sees her. 

 “I heard you coming,” he says. “I thought SHIELD were sending someone to take me out.”

 “Maybe they have,” she says. “I’m an agent now, I’ll have you know.”

 His smile is wide. “That’s good news.”

 It is. Natasha lets herself smile back. 

 James peels himself away from the wall. “I’m being watched, I’m sure.”

 “You are,” Natasha says, and shrugs. “They’ll know I’m here.”

 James looks around, as if he might actually spot a camera — he won’t, of course, and he must know that. “I understand why they don’t trust me.”

 So does Natasha, but she says, “You were brainwashed, James. They know that.”

 James shrugs lightly. “Well.”

 There’s something to unpack there, Natasha thinks, but it’ll have to wait. She’s sure SHIELD agents are on their way up now to pry them apart and send her away in disgrace.

 “When do you think they’ll…relax?” James asks. There’s a trace of hope in his voice. 

 Natasha thinks back over her own time with SHIELD — it hadn’t taken too long for them to _relax,_ but a while longer for them to trust her. She’d had to prove herself, and…

 It’s like a real, honest to God lightbulb goes off in her brain. 

 “Soon,” she tells him, as reassuringly as she can. “I have an idea to speed things up.”

 He looks at her with his eyebrows raised, waiting, but she smiles and shakes her head. 

 “All in good time, James,” she says, and reaches for his hand. He lets himself get pulled closer, a small, quiet smile on his lips when she leans up to peck his cheek. “Trust me.”

 “Always,” he says, breath soft on her skin. 

 

 

 “So what’s this idea?” Fury asks her, when she walks into his office the next morning. 

 “I knew you were watching,” she informs him, settling into the chair opposite his desk. This is going to take some convincing, she can tell. 

 “I know,” he says, and sighs. “You can’t do that again, but you already know that.”

 “I do,” she says. “But my idea _is_ really good.” There’s a hopeful smile on her face; she doesn’t hide it. 

 “Go on,” he says. “I’m waiting.”

 “You didn’t trust me until I proved that you could,” Natasha says. “So…let Barnes come with me on my next mission.”

 The look Fury gives her is as exasperated as it is intrigued. “Natasha, you _know_ we can’t do that.”

 “You can watch us,” Natasha says. “Like on the cruise. He helped me then.”

 “We know,” Fury says. “We saw the footage.”

 Natasha realises she’s leaning forwards, hands tight on the chair’s armrests. “Then give him a chance.”

 Fury gives her a long, measured look. “There’ll be conditions.”

 Natasha lets out all the air in her lungs on a long exhale. She sinks back into her chair. “What are they?”

 “We’re going to carry on with psychological evaluations,” he says. “Barnes is going to pass _every single one_ before we let him anywhere near the field. And we’ll be watching him _very_ closely on this mission.”

 Natasha almost relaxes. “That doesn’t sound so bad.”

 “And,” Fury says, and something in his tone makes her tense right back up, “we’ll have other agents with you. There to watch _him,_ and you, and the way you work together.”

 “Fine,” she says. “You’re testing my loyalties, though, right?”

 “No,” Fury says. “I trust you, Agent Romanov. I just want to make sure your… _judgement_ isn’t clouded.”

 “Understood,” Natasha says.

 “And,” Fury says again, and Natasha looks at him in disbelief. 

 “There’s _more?_ ” she says, and when Fury looks unimpressed, she tries a smile. His look doesn’t waver. 

 “And,” he repeats, “we’ll need to talk to you. About your time with the Winter Soldier.”

 Natasha stares at him. “I don’t—”

 “You can say no,” Fury says. “We’d understand. But it would slow the process.”

 Natasha gets it, she does. But she isn’t happy about it. “Fine. When?”

 “Tomorrow,” Fury says. “And we’ll give you your mission then, too.”

 Natasha leaves his office without another word, heads straight for the gym. She’s going to _pulverise_ that punching bag. 

 

 

Clint finds her halfway through the pulverising — he manages to convince her to leave the compound for a while, and outside, with fresh air and sunlight on her skin, she feels herself start to relax. 

 “It’s just frustrating,” she says, furiously drinking her milkshake while Clint sits across from her, quietly amused. “I just—wish things were simple.” She knows this is an unprecedentedly complicated situation, she _understands_ why things are the way they are, but it doesn’t stop her wishing things were different. 

 “I know,” Clint says. “But these things take time.”

 “Yep,” Natasha says, draining her milkshake. 

 “The mission is going to help,” Clint says. “A _lot._ I know you’ll pull it off, Nat.”

 “Thanks,” Natasha says, and a bit more of the tension she’s been carrying lately eases out of her. “I haven’t even _thought_ about the Stark situation for days.”

“It’ll distract you,” Clint says. “Go on, make some plans, work out some covers. Do what you do best.”

 She feels a smile starting to form. “Will do.”

 

 

 Natasha keeps herself busy until the time of her meeting with Fury arrives, doing what Clint suggested — working out a comprehensive plan for every situation she can think of, which, okay, isn’t _exactly_ what he suggested, but it’s close enough. 

 Fury meets with her in a boardroom, not an interrogation room. She appreciates the gesture. 

 “We’ll keep it casual,” Fury says, when she sits down. “This isn’t a _questioning,_ it’s a chat.”

 “Right,” Natasha says. She reminds herself she’s a SHIELD agent, now. They trust her, they believe in her. This is to help James, not to search through her past. 

 “Tell us what you want to, to start,” Fury says. 

 Natasha takes a deep breath, and tells them exactly what she feels comfortable sharing: the Winter Soldier was brought in to train the Black Widow, that he stayed for a long while, that they were sent on missions together more than once. 

 “And you had a relationship with him?” Fury asks, one eyebrow raised. 

 Natasha looks away. “We had something, yes.”

 “Something,” Fury echoes. “Off the record, Natasha, but it sounds like Barnes is gone on you.”

 Natasha has too much self control to _blush,_ but it’s close. “Really.” Her voice is flat. She looks back at Fury, who looks her square in the eye. “I’m not comfortable discussing that.”

 “Understood,” Fury says. “The way he tells it, you escaped without him.”

 Natasha can’t hold his gaze. “That’s not—I had an opportunity to run, and I took it.” 

 “I see,” Fury says. 

 She refuses to feel any more guilt over her choices. She did what she did, and now they’re dealing with it. 

 Fury _hmms_ to himself. “What you just told us lines up perfectly with what he did, so I’d say he’s passed this test.”

 “Good,” Natasha says, quietly. “How are the evaluations going?”

 “We’re working through the triggers he gave us,” Fury says. “We’ve got our best minds on it, don’t worry.”

 Natasha realises she’s folded her arms and forces herself to relax. “He can’t go on a mission until they’ve all gone.”

 “We know,” Fury says. “But we’re optimistic.”

 Natasha nods once. “So he’s…okay?”

 “We’ve been trying to fill him in on what he’s missed,” Fury says, and then sighs. “We’ll let you talk to him now, while we get your paperwork for the mission sorted. Remember you’re being watched.”

 “I will,” Natasha says, and tries to walk from the room at a normal speed. 

 

 

James is sat on his bed when Natasha walks in — through the front door, this time. He’s surrounded by papers, pictures, newspaper clippings. When he looks up, his eyes are red. 

 “Hi,” he says, simply, and starts sweeping the papers away. Natasha catches a glimpse of one: _Captain America presumed dead in heroic sacrifice._

 “You okay?” Natasha asks, cautiously. 

 “I think so,” he says, and orders the papers into a neat pile. He clears his throat. “Just—processing some things.”

 “I’m sorry,” Natasha whispers — she doesn’t _mean_ to whisper, but she finds her voice won’t come out any louder. 

 He shrugs, but it looks far from casual. “It’s what comes with being ninety something years old, I guess.” He seems to physically cast the pain off of him, sitting up straighter and brightening. “Any news?”

 “We might be going on a mission together,” Natasha says, and James seems to brighten for real. 

 “Seriously?” he says. 

 “It’s in the works,” Natasha says. She feels self-conscious, suddenly, thinking of the cameras trained on them, that Fury is probably watching — judging James’ mental state, if Natasha is _compromised._

 “That’s good news,” he says. He looks up at her, so openly, unbearably hopeful that Natasha feels a sharp twist somewhere near her heart. 

 She steps closer, ignoring the cameras completely, now, and runs her hand through James’ hair, lets him rest his head against her stomach. He wraps his arms around her waist. 

 “I’m glad I’m here,” he breathes into the fabric of her shirt. 

 “I’m glad you are, too,” she says, and when he tips his head back to look at her, she puts a hand on his cheek, strokes her thumb across his cheekbone. She thinks he looks healthier than she’s ever seen him, and the thought makes her smile. “It’s strange, isn’t it, that we both ended up here? Together?”

 “I don’t think so,” he says. He smiles, and she understands what he means. It isn’t so strange they'd find each other again. 

 “Fortunate, then,” she says, and his smile widens. 

 

 

 It takes two weeks for SHIELD to be willing to let James go with her. 

 Natasha spends the time training, gathering intel, planning the mission however she can, spending time with Clint, trying her hardest _not_ to worry about James. She’s not sure if she’s successful.

 Eventually, she’s lead into a briefing and there, already sitting at the table, is James. He looks even better than the last time she saw him — eyes not quite so shadowed, hair not quite so messy. He smiles at her, and she tries her best to smile back. 

 Maria Hill gives Natasha the spotlight to explain the intel she’s managed to pull into something like a plan: there’s a Stark Industries gala in a week, and whoever’s after Stark is _definitely_ going to use it as a way to get close to him. 

 “Sergeant Barnes and I can keep an eye on Stark and grab anyone who tries something,” Natasha says, and she’s impressed at how confident she sounds, how in control she seems. They don’t need to know that she’s been awake most nights, going over and over and over her plans. They _definitely_ don’t need to know that she spent far too much time wondering what the hell she was supposed to call James — _James_ was too informal and he wasn’t the Soldier anymore, so she settled for Sergeant Barnes and hoped it didn't sound weird.

 “Sounds good to me,” James says, which earns him a withering look from Hill. 

 “Stark saw me on the cruise,” Natasha says, to shift attention back to her. “I’ll change my look a bit, and I’ll need a new cover.”

 “Done,” Hill says. “You’ve both got covers, and a room booked at the hotel.” She slides a folder across the desk at them, and Natasha catches it before James does. 

" _A_ room?" Natasha repeats, in slight disbelief. She pushes the folder at James, who studies his cover with his eyebrows knitted together. “I thought you—” She stops herself from finishing the sentence: _I thought you were done testing me._

 “If you’re uncomfortable, it can be changed,” Hill says, and when Natasha looks up at her, narrow eyed, she sees that Hill isn’t _trying_ to antagonise her, that she really means it. That they trust her, that she’s an agent.

 “It’s fine,” Natasha says, voice clipped. She looks at James, who’s looking back at her. 

 “Yeah,” he says. “It’s fine.”

 

 

 The only word Natasha can use to describe the hotel is _swanky._

 Her and James check into their joint room, and it gives her a strange, complicated feeling in her stomach. 

 “Shall I carry you across the threshold?” James asks dryly, when they get to their room. 

 Natasha rolls her eyes. “Don’t even think about it.”

 He smiles to himself, ducking his head to hide it, and Natasha feels something in her chest swell and swell. She leans up and presses a kiss to his cheek, fast. Before she can head inside, he takes hold of her wrist, gently, gently, and guides her round to face him. She looks up at him, searching for something in his face — she’s not even sure what. It still seems miraculous to her that they’re both there together. 

 “Natalia,” he says, quietly, and she leans up to kiss him. 

 It’s a slow, searching kiss that makes her legs go a little weak. His mouth is so, so soft on hers, he holds her shoulders so gently, slides a hand so tentatively up to her cheek — she almost can’t stand it. She pulls him in closer, closer, puts her hands in his hair, sighs into his mouth. 

 “We should go inside,” he murmurs, still so close his lips brush hers when he speaks. 

 “Yeah,” she says, and tugs him through the door. 

 He drops their bags in one corner, and Natasha stares down the one double bed in the middle of the room. 

 “You okay?” James asks. He comes up behind her, puts his hands on her shoulders, rests his chin on the top of her head. 

 “Fine,” she says. “Are you?”

 “I think I’m…” he pauses, one of his thumbs brushing absently across her shoulder, up and down. “Hopeful.”

 She turns to face him. “Me too,” she says, and the temptation to kiss him again is _so strong,_ to get lost in him for a little while, forget the mission and the weight of what it is they’re trying to prove. But they can’t, not yet. 

 He smiles down at her, apparently understanding the same thing, and then says, “So what’s next?”

 “Next,” she says, all business, now, “we plan tonight.”

 She’s cut her hair from the long curls she’d had on the cruise ship, and it’s enough to make her look just different enough that she’s confident Stark won’t recognise her. There’s a slight risk that he’ll recognise James, but what are the chances anyone would think Bucky Barnes is really walking around in the 21st Century? She tries not to think about it as she gets changed into the low cut, slinky dress and high heels required for a mission like this. 

 “These are the guys after Stark,” Natasha says, tossing James a pack of photographs. He catches it easily and sits on the edge of the bed, inspecting each photo. There are five men in total, each one meaner looking than the last, but that’s never scared Natasha. “You keep an eye on Stark, I’ll watch the men.”

 “Got it,” James says. He looks up at her and seems to notice what she’s wearing. His mouth opens a bit, closes. Opens again. “Nat,” he says, finally. “I think you’ve just short-circuited my brain.”

 She laughs, a genuine, loud laugh — one she hasn’t heard from herself in a while. “That’s the idea, James.”

 He’s still staring, then he breaks into a wide grin. “Watch it, I might get jealous.”

 “Channel all that rage into beating up the mercs,” Natasha says, with a casual flip of her newly cut hair — the effect is kind of ruined by the way she can’t help matching his grin. 

 “That’s the plan.” He puts the pictures aside and stands, reaches for her. She crosses the gap between them and lets him pull her in close. “I’m not going to ruin your lipstick if I kiss you, am I?” he whispers. 

 “The packaging says smudge proof, so.” She tilts her head back and watches the way his eyes fall from hers to her mouth. 

 “Good,” he says and cups her cheek, brings their faces together. It’s another achingly slow kiss, one she just wants to _drown_ in for a little while. Every brush of his mouth on hers feels kind of miraculous, because she’d made her peace not all that long ago that she’d never feel it again. 

 She slides a hand into his hair and tugs lightly, just enough to reacquaint herself with how much shorter it is, now. He reacts by pulling her even closer, one hand spread firmly on her bare back, just above the line of her dress. The fingers of his metal hand are stroking gently across her cheek, moving to her hair, down the back of her neck. She shivers and holds him tighter. 

 Eventually, she pulls away, enough to see her lipstick _hasn’t_ left a mark on his mouth, and says, “We’ve got a job to do.”

 “Shame,” James says, eyes still on her lips. “Wow, that really is smudge proof.”

 “We can test it properly later,” she says, impulsively, and his eyebrows shoot up. 

 “I like that plan,” he says. “I like that plan a _lot._ ”

 She grins and reaches for the tie looped loose around his neck. She ties it with quick, deft fingers, then smooths it out and steps back to admire her handiwork. “Looking sharp, James.”

 He ducks his head. “I try.”

 

 

 The gala is _packed_ with people, which doesn’t faze Natasha — she casts James a wary look, but he seems relaxed, at ease. He’s loosened his tie and popped open his top button, and he’s leaning back with one elbow on the bar and the other holding his drink. The metal hand is hidden with a single black glove, which should look ridiculous but, surprisingly, blends in pretty well. 

 He _looks_ like a casual party-goer, someone important enough to be at a Stark Industries event, but Natasha can see the way he keeps his eyes focused on where Stark and Potts are mingling in the centre of the room.

 Natasha finds the mercs easily enough; they’re not hiding very well, with barely concealed weapons under their dress jackets. She makes sure to catch the one she's identified as their ringleader’s eye, give him a little, flirtatious smile, before she melts back into the crowd. 

 He follows her, because _of course he does,_ and she leads him on a merry chase down through the kitchen and out into the back. She’s fried his earpiece with a jab from her bracelet before he has a chance to get his hand above his waist, and it doesn't take much to get him spilling the plan after that: they’ll cut the lights right as Stark steps onstage to make his speech, then in the confusion grab him and bundle him into the back of their armoured van, idling outside.

 “I’ve got the van,” Natasha mutters into her hair. 

 “I’ve got Stark,” James says, voice smooth in her ear. 

 She refuses to find it distracting and heads outside. 

It’s quite easy to put the van and its driver out of action —the tyres aren’t armoured, after all — and then she’s back inside, watching the men. She’d studied the building in the run up to the mission, and she knows there’s only one place they could cut the power — the basement. And there’s only one way down there, so she stations herself by the doors leading to the stairwell and waits. 

 James is still idling by the bar, chatting to a blonde woman Natasha vaguely recognises as a SHIELD agent. True to Fury's word, the woman doesn't appear to be _helping,_ but Natasha is somewhat eased by her presence anyway. James' eyes skip back to Stark regularly. He seems fine, so Natasha turns away from them and zeroes in on the man making his way casually to the stairwell. 

 She falls right into his arms, pretending to be drunk, and he looks a bit taken aback but still fixated on his purpose — he rights her and steps around her to go downstairs, so she follows him into the stairwell and pounces as soon as the door is shut. 

 “Stairwell's clear,” she announces over comms, with a small amount of satisfaction. The man groans something unintelligible from where he’s laying face down on the ground. 

 Right, two left. Neither of them seem to have noticed their plan going very, very wrong. 

 And then, the lights go out. 

  _What?_ Natasha thinks, a bit desperately. There was no way anyone got past her. 

 There’s an uproar from the crowd, most of them drunk by this point of the night. Natasha tries to make out Stark’s silhouette, but her eyes haven’t adjusted and she can’t see a damn thing. She drops into a fighting stance anyway.

 Someone grabs at her shoulder, and she flips them onto the ground, twists the hand she’s holding until she feels it about to break and holds them still. The person standing next to her screams, and that sets off a panic that spreads through the room _fast._ Natasha keeps her grip tight and waits. 

 There’s the sound of a scuffle, and then a _gunshot,_ and Natasha’s mind goes startlingly, terrifyingly blank. 

 The lights come back up. Natasha sees she’s holding one of the mercs and knocks him out without preamble, stands up as if she hasn’t just spectacularly blown her cover and looks over the shocked faces in front of her, frantic.

 Stark is standing in the middle of the room. He’s… _unhurt._ And James is still by the bar, still with the SHIELD agent, and neither of them look like they’ve lost their composure.

 Natasha shuts her eyes as relief, powerfully strong, sweeps through her.

 When she opens them again, James is looking at her. He waves with his gloved hand, and she sees a hole in the material, revealing a little circle of bright silver. Bullet sized. 

 Natasha feels a smile start to tug at her mouth and fights it off with difficulty. 

 

 

The debriefing is surprisingly short. 

 Turns out the mercs had someone on the inside, a waiter with a family they’d threatened. When the time came, he’d cut the power. The man Natasha had taken out had been on his way down to check up on him. 

 “I shouldn’t have missed that,” Natasha says. “I did so much research, I shouldn’t have—”

 “Agent Romanov,” Hill interrupts, calmly. “SHIELD didn’t know about the waiter either.”

 “Next time we’ll have agents stationed on every floor,” the blonde woman says. “Because _next time_ we won’t be putting anyone through some stupid test.”

 Natasha feels a shock of gratefulness. “Thanks,” she says. 

 “Don’t mention it,” the woman says. And then, “I’m Agent 13.”

 “And I’m Agent Romanov,” Natasha says, because she finds she really likes the way it sounds. She shakes Agent 13’s hand. 

 “Sergeant Barnes,” Hill says, and Natasha tries to not visibly react to hearing him step up beside her. He’d been ambushed by the med team to have his hand looked at, which struck Natasha as kind of pointless, considering it was virtually indestructible. 

 “Agent Hill,” James returns. 

 “You did very well,” she says. “I’m impressed. I’m sure Director Fury will be, too.”

 James doesn’t answer right away, but when Natasha looks across at him, he looks… _proud_. “Thank you,” he says. “I’m glad.”

 Hill nods at him once, then steps away to talk to the rest of the agents gathered. 

 “Barnes caught a bullet,” Agent 13 tells Natasha. “Literally. With his hand.”

 James shrugs. “I went straight for Stark when the lights went down, which blew my cover because the mercs had night vision goggles. One of them shot at me.”

 “So he caught the bullet,” Agent 13 says, then shakes her head and walks away. 

 “Impressive,” Natasha says, feeling herself start to smile. “And all I did was take out three of them.” 

 James grins back at her. “Well, you had a good teacher.”

 Natasha rolls her eyes, but she can’t quite hide that smile on her face. 

 

 

They’re told they’ve got a meeting with Fury in two days — it would’ve been sooner, but he’s tied up trying to come up with a reasonable explanation to give to Stark for why someone tried to assassinate him, which is kind of difficult considering SHIELD _still_ don’t know. 

 That’s a problem for tomorrow, Natasha decides, as she watches the ballroom finish emptying out. No one hangs back to keep an eye on them, which Natasha counts as a win. They’re still assigned to separate cars, though, but Natasha supposes they won’t be _really_ trusted together for a while yet. 

 Back at SHIELD HQ, Hill informs Natasha that nobody’s expecting her — or James — in any official capacity until the meeting.

“You can do what you want,” Hill says. “He has to stay in the building.”

 “Fine,” Natasha says.

 James finds her waiting for him in the foyer. 

 “I hear I’m no longer confined to my room,” he says casually. “Want to give me a tour?”

 “Tomorrow,” Natasha says, and holds a hand out for him to take. “I remember plans to test out how smudge proof my lipstick is?”

 James’ mouth pops open. “Uh, yeah. Sounds good to me.”

 

 

 Natasha's swept her apartment for bugs enough times that she has absolutely no issues shoving James up against the wall and getting his shirt the rest of the way open as soon as the door shuts behind them.

 James kisses her hard, hands tangling in her hair, and she runs her hands over his bare chest, traces the scars where his left arm joins his body, feels the muscle at his stomach move under her touch. 

 “I’ve missed you so much,” he gasps against her neck, then gets a hand under one of her thighs, and she gets on board fast — she hooks her legs around his waist, winds her arms around his neck, kisses him deep so he _knows_ she missed him too. 

 He carries her to her bedroom, keeps kissing her as he drops them both to the bed, leans over her with his arms braced either side of her head and says, “God, that dress is amazing.”

 “Get it off me,” she says, and he does just that. 

 

 

Turns out her lipstick is _remarkably_ smudge proof. 

 

 

Natasha wakes up the next morning with an arm draped over her waist. She smiles, rolls over, nudges her face into James’ neck. 

 “Mornin’,” he mumbles, hand sliding up her back. 

 “Morning,” she says, and presses a kiss to his shoulder. “Sleep well?”

 “Best I’ve slept in a while.” He leans back enough to look down at her, then laughs. “How the hell is your lipstick _still_ on?”

 “I only buy the best,” she says, proudly. 

 “Clearly,” he says, and pulls her closer to kiss her. 

 “Brush your teeth,” she says, when they part, but there’s no feeling behind it. She brings a hand to his face and runs her thumb over his cheek. “Don’t you dare shave, though.”

 He grins at her, slow and lazy, and kisses her again and again and again. 

 

 

“Want to meet Hawkeye?” she asks James, as she attempts to cook them an omelette for breakfast. 

 “Who or what is that?” James asks, without looking up from the newspaper he’s been studying. 

 “A friend,” Natasha says. “He brought me in.”

 James does look up, then. “I’d love to.”

 Natasha smiles at him, then realises she’s burning the omelette. “I can show you the gym, too, but there’s not much else to do here.”

 “Fine by me,” he says. “I’m happy doing whatever, as long as it’s with you.”

 “That’s so cheesy,” Natasha says, but she’s smiling wide. “And, you know, feeling’s mutual.”

 They spend a moment grinning at each other like idiots until the omelette starts smoking. 

 

 

Natasha introduces Clint and James, and it goes exactly as well as she expected. 

 “Hm,” Clint says. “You’ll do.”

 James raises his eyebrows. “Thanks. I think.”

 “Do you think you can punch a hole through that punching bag?” Clint asks him, and James rolls his shoulders back, accepting the challenge. 

 “I _know_ I can.”

 

 

They end up having lunch in the SHIELD canteen, because there’s nowhere else to go in the building. 

 Clint and James get along weirdly well, which makes Natasha both relieved and pleased. James is fascinated by Clint’s array of upgraded arrows, and when Natasha returns to their table with a tray of food, she finds James staring down the wrong end of an arrow that _explodes._

 “I don’t remember either of you being this stupid before you met,” she says, and is given matching wounded looks. 

 

 

Natasha and James spend the rest of the day in her apartment, and it starts off just watching TV, but Natasha has him pressed back against the couch cushions pretty fast, hands on his belt, and then they can’t seem to keep their hands _off_ each other. 

 Natasha refuses to think about the meeting the next day — she’s not worried, not really, because she knows they both did well. It still makes her jittery to think about it, though, so she doesn’t. And it’s _very_ easy not to when James is busy sucking a mark onto her neck. 

 She falls asleep with her head on his bare chest, listening to his heartbeat, like she did on the cruise ship, and that smile is back on her face and she can’t shake it off because they’re really _here,_ together, in SHIELD HQ, given a second chance. It feels too good to be true, but it _is_ true, and Natasha goes giddy just thinking about it. 

 

 

Fury’s face gives nothing away in their meeting the next morning. He watches them both for a moment, then says, “I’m impressed.”

 Natasha relaxes just slightly, but James remains rigid. 

 “That mission easily could’ve turned into a disaster,” Fury continues. “But you managed to salvage it.”

 He directs the last part to James, whose eyes widen. 

 “And you’ve proved that you work well together,” Fury says. “So, Sergeant, we’re offering you a job. Train with us, _stay_ with us, and you’ll be a SHIELD agent alongside our own Agent Romanov.”

 “I like the sound of that,” James says, and Natasha could _burst_ she’s so happy. 

 “But,” James says, and Natasha freezes. “Hydra will be looking for me. They won’t let me go.”

 “We know,” Fury says. “We’re willing to take that risk.”

 James glances across at her, gives her a quick, nervous smile, then looks back at Fury. “It’ll… _I’ll_ put everyone here in danger.”

 Fury gives him a very, _very_ unimpressed look, one Natasha matches. “Barnes. We’re always in danger here.”

 He nods. “Point taken.”

 “So?” Fury prompts, and James sighs, smiles. 

 “Yes.”

 

 

Natasha knocks at the door to James’ new apartment, in the same wing as her — the  _recently brought in and have nowhere else to go_ wing — and waits with her breath held until he opens the door. 

 As soon as he does, she flings her arms around his neck. 

 “Whoa,” he says, staggering back a step, bringing her inside and shutting the door. “Everything okay?”

 “You’re an idiot,” she says, voice muffled where she’s shoved her face into his neck again. “You were going to _turn down SHIELD_ because you were worried you’d put us in _danger?_ Do you know who I am?”

 He laughs, slightly, and winds his arms around her waist. “Yes,” he says. “To both of those questions.”

 “I love you,” she says, and it’s not the first time she’s ever said it, but it’s the first time she’s said it in a while. 

 He leans his head back until she takes the hint and detaches her face from his skin, looks up at him. He’s smiling wide. 

 “I love _you_ ,” he says, and Natasha _melts_ against him, head against his chest. 

 He strokes a hand through his hair. “I’m allowed to leave the building, now. What’s there to see?”

 “Nothing,” Natasha says, and kisses him. “Not until tomorrow, anyway.”

 James grins against her mouth. “I like the way you think, Romanov.”

 Natasha finds herself smiling too hard to kiss him back. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title from Salvatore by Lana Del Rey, because that lyric specifically inspired the first chapter
> 
> this is marked as complete but I may continue to add chapters to it if people like this!! I have some vague ideas for more following the MCU timeline and I hope future updates would be faster than the gap between chapter 1 and 2 (I'm sorry this is so incredibly late wow) 
> 
> as always, comments + kudos are v much appreciated!! please let me know what you think <3


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